9 months old!

Our sweet baby girl is 9 months old! I can't even believe it! Mackenzie is as sweet as ever and such a good, easy baby. The biggest change is that she is sleeping in her crib full-time now!!! WooHoo! If you don't remember, at about 1 month old, she would only sleep in her swing. She slept so well there and I didn't want to fight it, so we let her do that until just recently. We tried little by little to get her in the crib and she would usually sleep there a couple hours at night and half of her naps and then demand to be put back in the swing. I might not have tried so hard, but because she's getting heavier, the swing goes through batteries alot faster now and D batteries aren't getting any cheaper! But the final straw to get her in the crib full time was that the swing broke! Now a swing should last much longer than 9 months, but when you think how many hours that thing has run, no wonder it died. So we had no choice but to use the crib, and she's doing great! She goes to bed around 8 pm and will sleep until 7 or 8 am usually waking once around 5 am to have the binky put back in her mouth. I used to feed her at that waking, but she doesn't need it anymore, so hopefully she'll sleep all the way through soon.

As for her physical development, she can sit up by herself and loves to play with her toys on the floor. She loves to rock back and forth on her hands and knees, but still hasn't figured out how to move forward. She especially loves toys that rattle, have tags, have texture, or just has a good end to chew on. She loves to look at books, but Rylan is having a hard time with this. He still views all the books as his and he doesn't like when she has one. The toys aren't an issue, because he doesn't remember the baby toys being his so she has her own toys, but books are different. We're working on that. :) She is still just a little peanut, only about 16 pounds. She's in the 10th percentile for weight and 60th for height, so it looks like she'll be tall like her momma!

Mackenzie will eat anything you give her and she hasn't turned up her nose at anything, peas, carrots, prunes, she'll eat it all. She LOVES the little cereal puffs we've been giving her and is getting really good at picking them up with her thumb and forefinger to get them in her mouth. We have to monitor this closely though, because Rylan will sneak by and steal them off her tray! She prefers thicker food, and even though she still has no teeth, is good at chewing with her gums.

She loves to talk and is constantly making noise. She says da-da-da-da, ga-ga-ga-ga, ba-ba-ba-ba, and a few times, I've heard ma-ma! When she's playing contently, we often hear a light little sing-song voice and it's so sweet! When she's really excited, she just screams and squeals non-stop. Wow can that girl hit the high notes! It's ear-piercing at times, but we love it.

And speaking of ear-piercing, look what we did yesterday!

We got her ears pierced!!!! We had talked about it when she was about 4/5 months old, but she had just started pulling on her ears alot so I figured we would have to wait a couple years, but she hasn't been touching her ears at all lately, so with some persuasion from Grandma, we went for it. She cried for about a minute and I felt terrible, but she was smiling again before we left. She hasn't touched them at all and is really good when I clean them. You have to admit, they are just adorable! Now there's really no mistaking her for a boy!

Just a quick snapshot of Rylan. To show our love for Fargo, we doned our bison-gear yesterday (much to Nick's chagrin). I had a Bison sweatshirt on too, but I hadn't taken a shower at this point yesterday so trust me, you didn't want me in the picture!

Flood 09

As I'm sure you're all aware, this whole area is dealing with flooding. It's not good and it's not over. Fargo/Moorhead is obviously getting the worst right now but they've been putting up one hell of a fight. I think they finally got some welcomed news today though. After their crest prediction was increased 2 days in a row, the weather service announced today that they were fairly certain that the river was finally cresting today and would not reach the 43 foot mark they feared. They can still have fluctuations up to a foot due to wind or ice jams, but at least the rapid rise is over.

A few neighborhoods in Fargo have had voluntary evacuations and 20% of Moorhead was mandatorily evacuated, but for the most part, they were precautionary evacuations and not because everything was covered in water. They are still fighting though and the sandbag dikes are holding fairly well. I didn't realize that when a leak starts in those dikes that they can still fix it. Hundreds of people are on call if any leaks start and backup sandbags are available at the drop of a hat. They are still running sandbag central in the FargoDome so they have enough backups but hopefully they can stop that soon.

It's going to be a long road though. They have torn up the city to put up contingency dikes and do whatever they can to hold the water back. Just today, I saw that they were digging up soccer fields at a middle school to have dirt to build up the dikes again. And even though the river has hopefully stopped rising, that doesn't mean it's dropping very fast. It will probably stay at this level for the next 5-7 days, so those sandbags have a long time to keep holding. Hopefully Fargo/Moorhead has seen the worse, but you never know. We are certainly keeping everyone there in our prayers.

(Please keep in mind that everything I know about Fargo I have seen on our local news, so my info could be outdated already. And I'm still wrangling 2 kids here, so I could have heard something wrong too.)

So far, we are okay up here, but all that water has to come our way. We actually had a crest today and the river went down one or two tenths of a foot, but we still have the major crest to come. All week the crest has been pushed back, and as of now, our crest of 51 feet is expected on Thursday, but could stay around that level until April 4/5. Because we have an awesome dike system that is built to 57 feet, we should be fine, but you can't help but wonder what if. It's not like our dike has ever been tested with this much water before so we're all praying that there are no problems. However, the longer I see the sandbag dikes hold in Fargo, the more confident I feel about our solid, engineered one. There are parts just out of town that are having problems, so they've been fighting with sandbags and dirt, but as a whole, our city is safe.

What no one is looking forward to is the additional 8 inches of snow that is forecasted for Monday. We just got almost a foot of snow this past week and we certainly don't need any more. But since we have the snow, it's almost better for the weather to stay cold because we don't want all that to melt right now.

So please keep everyone who is battling the water in your prayers. They still have a long way to go, so pray for their strength and endurance to keep fighting!

Here's a video that brought tears to my eyes. It really is amazing how everyone has come together! To get the full effect, you need to hear the song, so be sure to pause my song on the playlist below in the right column.



And here are some pictures that I took of the river. These pictures were taken at the same place, the first one last Friday, and the second was taken yesterday. I won't be taking any more though because I guess you can be arrested if you are caught on the dike. And it wasn't until I was back down that I realized how dangerous it is up there, especially with all the snow. If you would slip and fall in the water, you might not be able to get back out because it's so slippery. Anyhow, even with the water covered with snow, you can see the difference.

Big Sky

Sorry it took so long, but I've been feeling like crap. But here they are. Notice the beautiful blue sky! It was awesome!

Katie, Brian, and I


Rylan and I tubing. I didn't realize his hat was almost completely over his eyes!


One evening, there was a big air competition so we watched the beginning. It was fun to see something like that in person. Rylan loved it and the best part was that every time someone fell, he would look at me and say, "dat one hurt" in a very concerned tone. I love that he is empathetic. Here we are watching the show.



One of his favorite toys was a cheapie flashlight that Grandma got him. He loved taking the batteries out just to put them back in. You can kinda see on his right cheek the bite mark from daycare.

Helping Grandpa clean the floors

I tried so hard to get a picture of her on all fours, but everytime I would put the camera up, she would plop down and flash me a huge grin. Goof ball!

A piranha in Montana

We were in Montana for a long weekend with Nick's family and had a great time. Katie and Brian were able to come as well and it was so great to see them again, we miss them so much! We flew there on Wednesday, hung out on Thursday, spent Friday and Saturday on the slopes and came back home yesterday (Sunday). The weather was beautiful and we had a blast! I'm still sore all over, but hey, I've only been snowboarding 5 times in my life, so I had some re-learning to do.

Where were the kids you might ask? We put them in daycare right at the mountain and they had a good time. Both days Rylan was reluctant at first, but his teacher did a great job getting him interested in the toys and he was fine when I left. The first day I was nervous leaving them because I didn't want Rylan to be sad and Mackenzie was sleeping when we dropped her off so I didn't know how she would react with strangers, but they both had a great time. Rylan was so excited that he got to play with other kids and the teachers said that Kenzie was the happiest baby they've ever had. So I was much more relaxed the 2nd day. However, when we picked them up that second day, Rylan had a bruise/scratch on his cheek and the accident report said it was a bite from another child. Apparently, Rylan was playing with a toy that another boy decided he wanted, so he bit him. He's fine, but when we asked him about it, he said, "that boy try to eat me!" Poor sweetie! Obviously, I don't want my kid to get hurt, but I'm glad that he is so good about sharing and it's not him doing the biting. In the end, it's all fine, I just thought his explaination was hilarious!

Oh, and I do have some pictures to share, but we left the camera on the jet. Nick will be getting it back on Wednesday though, so hopefully I'll get them on here Thursday.

Look what I made!

Do you remember when I said I was going to try to make a taggie blanket for Mackenzie? I did it and it was a success! Well, the second one was a success. I didn't completely think it through the first time and after I sewed the first seam and then turned it right side out, all my tags were on the inside. Whoops! But the second version turned out great! Here it is!

It's about 15 inches square, so just a little cuddle blankie. It's pink minky embossed floral fabric on one side and flannel pink and green dots on the other side with pink, green, and baby bear tags. I wish I would have made the tags a bit longer, but Mackenzie still likes it. I'm excited to make another one!

Yay! Potty Progress!!!

Way back when I posted about our potty training start. Needless to say, it didn't go very well as we're still working on it. He just wasn't into it and so we didn't push it. We waited a month or so and tried again. We have continued trying every now and then and he has never showed much interest, until now. A week ago today, we got our new potty chair in the mail (because the old one was poorly designed and allowed pee to get in the cracks if he didn't pee straight down) and right away, he was excited to use it. So we put him on the potty every once in a while and he would usually pee with no problem, but was still afraid to poop in the potty. We had been using jellybeans as a reward, but they were getting old and chewy and he didn't like that. So we switched to peanut butter M&M's and he can't get enough of them.

Without going into all the dirty (literally) details, he has been doing great over the last few days and I think this is the real deal! He has pooped on the potty 3 times now, and told us that he has to go, so that's huge! He's been wearing underwear and I'm committed to stick with the underwear and just clean up the messes so we can't turn back. I know there will be accidents, but it feels like he just gets it now and I'm so excited and so proud of him. He's so dang cute sitting on that potty and even more cute with underwear on his little butt! Here's a picture of my favorite ones.

Oh, and this kid doesn't forget anything! Weeks ago, I told him that when he pooped on the potty I would get him a little cake and we'd have a potty party. So what does he remind me of today? Yep, he gets a cake. So off we went to Target to pick out a special cake. Despite my efforts to pursuade him to pick the carrot cake (because that's what I was really craving) he picked red velvet. And what kid wouldn't, a red cake with chocolate chips on top looks way more appealing! It was a good choice though, it's very tasty!

Oh, one more story. On our way to Target, he suddenly told me he had to go potty. So I asked him to hold it and we would go right when we got to Target. We went right to the bathroom and he did go, but his undies and pants were just slightly damp, which was good because that meant he had started to go, but then was able to stop knowing he should go in the potty. Anyhow, so when we got home, I was changing his clothes and I asked him if he had an accident. He said yes, then looked down at his pants and said, "goll dang-it". I think he gets funnier every day!

Yay for potty progress!

8 months old!

Our baby is 8 months old! I can hardly believe it! She's as perfect as ever, and happy as a clam! She still doesn't have any teeth, and I'm not going to mention them until they finally show up, because I've been saying she must be teething since she was 4 months old! Apparently, I don't know what I'm talking about! She has graduated to the next size of diapers and is still getting longer. Her hair is growing and I'm afraid I'll have to trim the back so she doesn't have a mullet. She's not crawling yet, but getting closer. She's pretty content to just lie on her stomach and watch everything that's going on, but she'll occasionally get her knees up under her. As far as sitting up goes, she can do it, but when she gets excited, she'll throw herself backward and then just laugh. Her favorite place to be lately is in her high chair, either eating or playing with toys. And speaking of eating, she can't get enough. If you aren't quick enough with the next bite, she will scream and let you know. She has never left food behind in the bowl and would probably keep eating if I kept giving her more, so alas, she has an appetite like her mom! We've started working with a sippy cup and she's getting the hang of it, but still just likes to chew on the spout. She is constantly making noises and loves to spit. We are seeing more of her personality every day and so far, she's just a happy, happy girl!